


All some children do is work

by Beleriandings



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Past Abuse, Post-Canon, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:35:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26291260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: Sometimes, Rhiannon looks at her children and can't help but think about her little brother.
Relationships: Johnny Davies/Rhiannon Davies, Rhiannon Davies & Ianto Jones, referenced Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 30
Kudos: 93
Collections: Torchwood Fan Fests: Bingo Fest 2020





	All some children do is work

**Author's Note:**

> For the Torchwood Fan Fests Bingo Fest 2020. Prompt: "kids".  
> (Content warning for discussions of canonical past domestic abuse, by Rhiannon and Ianto's dad.)

Sometimes, Rhiannon looks at her children and can’t help but think about her little brother.

It’s been a few years now; she doesn’t think of him quite so much otherwise, not quite every day now. It still hurts, of course it does. But the wound is older now, closed over even if sometimes, something can rip it open again. It’s not always easy to predict what it’ll be, either.

Grief’s just like that, she thinks.

David is fifteen. He doesn’t come home from school with bruises and split lips anymore, not after Rhiannon had a _quiet word_ with the mother of the kid who gave them to him.

She remembers when they were kids and Ianto would come home with a fresh black eye, darting away to their room almost before she could see. They’d both been good at that, at slipping through the back door if possible or else stealing in through the front room, where their dad was sprawled across the broken down sofa if he wasn’t in the pub. Rhiannon had tried to stay out of the house as much as possible. Ianto, by contrast, had just taught himself to stay so quiet, becoming so good at disappearing that you almost forgot he was there at all.

Not that she’d been very interested in finding her little brother then; she’d spent as much time outside the house as possible, and when she was at home she’d found herself taking her dad’s side when she could.

She isn’t proud of that, these days; not now she’s thought about it from the perspective of an adult with children of her own. She’s not that girl anymore, the girl who made a show of being fierce and brash and bold when she was out but when she went home, immediately turned to appeasement, to try to spare herself. Susan says it’s a relatively normal reaction for a child in that situation – her sister’s a social worker, and she says things like this sometimes – but Rhiannon still feels guilty.

She feels guilty for not taking her mother’s side more, for not taking Ianto’s side. Instead she remembers watching from the crack in the doorway as her dad shouted. Ianto wouldn’t respond either, he’d just stand there and take it, face like a blank wall, completely gone away inside. But when her dad had been drunk that had only made him more angry, demanding to know why his son wouldn’t stand up for himself.

And Rhiannon had done nothing. Why? She’d been fifteen and scared and hurting, that’s why, she realises now. But at the time she’d always just felt relief that it wasn’t her.

She looks at her own children, and at Johnny, and gives thanks to whatever’s out there – she never was much one for praying, even though her mum had made them all go to church on Christmas and Easter – that her house isn’t like that. There’s no silence, or at least none like that, like the terrible hush that had sometimes pervaded the house she grew up in.

Mica is twelve, and when Rhiannon finds her curled up on the bathroom floor her eyes glaze with panic.

Once she’d found Ianto like that, was the thing. He’d been in a fight at school, it had been one of the boys from rugby that followed him home, and his nose had been broken and bloody, but he hadn’t done anything to stop it; just let it bleed as he sobbed into his skinny knees, drawn up against his chest.

Rhiannon hadn’t known what to say to him. She had tried, half-heartedly, awkwardly, to put her hand on his arm, but he’d just pushed her out of their room and yelled at her to leave him alone.

(She should have tried harder, she knows now. But that’s a familiar message with everything to do with her brother and their relationship, and of course now it’s too late.)

So when Rhiannon finds Mica just like that, she feels only dread, quickly followed by anger; whoever hurt her daughter is going to have to answer to her.

But it’s not that, she finds out; after she’s sat Mica down at the kitchen table with a mug of hot chocolate, she manages to get it out of her. There’s a girl in her class that Mica has a crush on, and she’d been too scared to tell her, and even more scared to tell Rhiannon herself apparently. The realisation hits Rhiannon like a punch to the chest; it had been right here at this table that she’d sat opposite Ianto – the second last time she saw him, alive at least – and he’d told her about the man he loved. Of course he hadn’t exactly said that word, _love_ , but it’s there in hindsight, of course it is. And oh, there’s the hindsight again, always clearer.

That had been more than six years ago now. Rhiannon had thought things had changed since then – had thought she’d changed – but apparently her daughter is still nervous about coming out to her. Even though Mica had had that girl in her class back then, even _then_ … well, this sort of thing is just _hard_ , is the thing Rhiannon’s coming to learn. She’s fucked up as a parent in this, she realises, just as she fucked up as a big sister.

She’s going to be better, she promises herself as she sits with Mica on the sofa. She doesn’t have any advice for her daughter; just acceptance, and love. Later, David comes home from football, and she drags him down onto the sofa too despite his protests; she doesn’t want her baby boy, her first child, shying away from hugs with his mum and sister just yet. Or ever, she thinks.

Johnny comes home a little later. They’re watching _The Great British Bake Off_ and Mica and David are in the midst of a heated debate about pastry, the heaviness of before banished for the moment. Rhiannon smiles up at Johnny, gesturing down at the sofa beside her and leaning gratefully against his side when he sits down with her.

Later, she tells him what Mica told her earlier. They open up Rhiannon’s laptop and do some googling together. There’s a kind of quiet consensus between them; they’re going to be better about this, this time.

And they are. More time passes; their children are grown up now. David’s moved out, off to do an apprenticeship, and Mica’s working on her A-Levels; she wants to go to university. Rhiannon misses her babies, but she’s so, so proud of both of them.

And they remind her so very much of her little brother. More than a decade’s gone past now; he’d be in his late thirties, which is a strange thought. Even stranger, the thought that he could still have been here now, if things had been a little different.

Gwen had told her, early on, that Ianto had died saving the children of the world from… well, whatever _that_ had been, all those years ago. Sometimes it occurs to her that if Ianto had lived, she might not have her children anymore. Or perhaps it wouldn’t have made a difference either way; she has no way of knowing. She doesn’t even know exactly what happened, only the vague assurance that he’d died a hero. Much good as that ever did anyone, she thinks bitterly.

It’s been years, but thinking like this, unspooling the could-have-beens and the worst-cases and the equally-bad-but-different scenarios still makes her sob, welling up with tears in the middle of the kitchen out of nowhere.

She goes to visit his grave, sometimes; again, less often these days. She’s made her peace with it, nearly, the too-short span of years engraved below the name of the last one left of her childhood. Or at least, she tells herself she has as she walks across the grass, but usually by the time she gets there she’s less sure. Her mother and father are buried close by; somehow, they hurt less.

You expect to outlive your parents, is the thing; you’re prepared for it, at least to some degree. But your little brother, less so.

At least she’s got Johnny. She holds onto him after Mica leaves. She’ll only be in Aberystwyth, just a few hours’ drive, but it feels like half the globe away.

When she thinks of her children going away, she always thinks of Ianto. She’d been so hurt back then, when he’d taken off for London with not a word, but now she understands better. She understands at least something of what he was running from, and what he was running to. She remembers meeting Lisa, once, and she’d understood then, a little. Now, she understands better, though of course it’s still too late.

Sometimes, she wonders about Ianto’s boyfriend; Jack, he’d said his name was. She never got to meet him. She wonders if this Jack was heartbroken. She wonders what he’s doing now, this man her brother clearly cared for. She still doesn’t know exactly who Gwen was to Ianto either, but god, she’d _grieved._ She’d stood at the funeral, looking like her heart had been scooped out of her chest. This man she doesn’t know, who had made Ianto look like _that_ … he hadn’t even been there.

Nevertheless, she hopes Ianto was happy before he died, at least a little bit. She hopes he was happier than he let her see. God knew he’d deserved it.

She makes sure to talk to her children on the phone, to keep in contact, to ask about their lives. Mica’s dating a girl from her uni, who seems nice enough to Rhiannon. David’s got a job at a posh firm in town, fixing their computer systems. She doesn’t understand all of it, but she asks anyway, and listens to the answers, and tells them she loves them every time she rings off.

She always asks, and she always listens, and she makes sure to never let them drift away. Because after all, Rhiannon’s learned the hard way that in the end, that’s all they’ve got.

**Author's Note:**

> .....And with this, I get BINGO!!!
> 
> (Title is a lyric from [Children's Work](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSxSCv7Cegc) by Dessa, which is not the _precise_ vibes of Rhiannon and Ianto but also. listen. _yes it is_ )


End file.
